When he grins at me and says hello, it’s clear he’s still nuts about me.
I remember he wanted to study art. When we were dating, he gave me a canvas striped with all these shades of color, like a rainbow. Later I found out it was just an exercise for design class, but still it was nice. I bet if I’d stayed with him, he’d have painted my portrait, and it would have been so good they’d put it up in some gallery, like they’ve got that Pinkie up at the Huntington, where everyone goes to gawk, wondering just who that delicate beauty was to old Thomas Lawrence.
“You still paint?” I ask Steve. He used to be a funny-looking guy, but his beaky nose and bulging brow have smoothed into a more regular face. And he has a much better haircut these days. No bowl-clip here.
He nods. “I paint houses. I work for my uncle now.”
“You didn’t go to college?”
“I take some courses at East Los.”
“Any art classes?”
He laughs. “Nah, I’m sick of paint by the end of the day.”
Maybe it’s the dope, but I feel like the mice might start skittering in the piano again. Since I’m about to get married, I keep it friendly, but not overly so. I’m even nice when his girlfriend shows up —a stick insect with big hair —bearing two tall Cokes.
I have a decent time with my brother, despite his lame friends, whose conversation is about as dumb as a person can imagine. I ignore them and enjoy the dope, the faraway, muffled feeling it gives me. All muy tranquilo, except I keep flashing on that fitting appointment. No way will I go all red-eyed and stinking of weed to zip myself into artificial seed pearls. Talk about a downer. Just thinking about it creates this pressure in my shoulders and neck. In fact, since I’ve known Ceci, I’ve had this stiff neck from tension, a pain like you get when your beloved pillow falls off the bed and you end up sleeping all crooked.
A week from the wedding, and I have to admit there are some things about Luis that kind of disturb me. Like his drinking. He’s only twenty-five, but already he’s a huge lush. He even admits it. There’s a long tradition of badass drinking in his family. His father holds a job and doesn’t drive around collecting DUIs, but the man puts away nearly a fifth of Jack Daniel’s a night. Even my dad can’t keep up, and the old man’s no piker. Luis, himself, easily polishes off a six-pack while watching baseball on television. Now, I like a drink myself. I even have a favorite wine —Chateau La Salle —which only costs a few dollars and requires no corkscrew. But Luis doesn’t understand the concept of having a glass of wine only now and again.
Tonight he brought over a six-pack for dinner. Two beers remain in the fridge when we decide to go bowling with Cary and Loretta. Typically, when a guest brings drinks, he’s supposed to leave the undrunk portion for the household, but Luis makes a big deal of helping me clean up after dinner and taking out the trash. With it, he lugs out the beers. I assume he’s throwing them away, hope maybe he’s giving up drinking. But as we’re about to climb into the car, Luis digs the beers out of the garbage to drink on the way to the bowling alley.
“You diehard!” I let out a laugh, but I have to force it.
Loretta shoots me a look, though she doesn’t say a thing.
But when we get home, she starts in on that gift business. Seated before the vanity, she’s rubs in her Noxema real casually and says, “You ever think about Fermina and the gifts she supposedly gave us?” She’s trying to be offhand, but I can see she’s taking it somewhere. “I admit I’ve got my doubts, especially when I couldn’t save the dogs. I believed it for a long time, and it was real to the extent that I believed in it. I know I do have some ability, some skill, in treating animals. But I have to do the work, to educate and train myself. It’s not the gift I thought it was.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Well, what if it’s the same for you? What if, say, you’re telling yourself a lie and making yourself believe it. It’s never going to be true, just because you want it to be. You have to do the work to keep believing it.” She screws the lid back on the jar and wipes her hands on a washcloth. “For instance, what if you’re telling yourself you love Luis, but you’re just settling for him? He drinks a lot, doesn’t he? And he’s not all that smart. I mean, you could try it out, not force yourself to believe, and see what happens.”
“Cut the crap!” I tell her. “I’m not lying to myself. I love Luis. Of course, I don’t expect you to understand that.”
Her nasty parrot whistles and squawks from its cage. “Bullshit!”
“Will you cover that fucking thing up?” I tell her.
She throws a quilt over it, and then stares at me like I’m a specimen in an experiment that’s showing some unusual effects. She leaves it alone, though.
I’m not lying to myself. I think about things as they are, and I am worried. I’m about to marry a guy who drinks way too much. But I also believe in the power of love. That’s probably my real gift, not telling lies. With love, people can handle whatever shit comes their way. If, for instance, Ceci was capable of loving her husband —instead of being fixated on instant potatoes and pillows —why, I bet he wouldn’t drink at all. That’s what Loretta doesn’t get. My love for Luis is real, deep, and true. No lie!
I plan to spend my last day on earth as a single person with my family. I’m thinking I’ll cook them a special dinner, spend time with each, and say my good-byes, that kind of thing. But, first thing in the morning, there’s Ceci on the phone with her list of things for me to do before the rehearsal this afternoon. “M’ija, good thing you took the day off. We got tons to do.”
“What about my family?”
She says, “Family is forever, but we got to pick up that punch bowl before noon.”
So, whoosh, off we go in her little car, Ceci yammering the whole way about boutonnieres and where to put the table favors and how she doesn’t know why Nilda insists on boiling the beans when the canned are just as good, ask anyone. I stare out the window, wondering how badly my face will scar if I swing open the door and hurl myself out. Then I sneak a look at old Ceci, trying to find some resemblance to Luis. There’s very little of my intended, thank God, in this dumpy woman with coppery sausage curls. But what if Luis and I have a baby who looks like her? As I’m picturing a miniature version of my future mother-in-law kicking in a bassinet, she turns to me and says, “You know, I’m going to be your mama now that you’re marrying my son.”
My face gets hot. “What?”
“Well, your mother’s gone, m’ija, so I thought —”
“My mother’s not gone,” I tell her. “She’s still with me.”
She reaches over and pats my hand. “It’s just nerves.”
I close my eyes and see my mother’s face. Her short, curly black hair, pink cheeks, the bulbous tip of her nose, her glasses, her pale lips parted, and her small dark eyes softening with compassion. Of course, I’m with you, always with you, my mother whispers to me, but you can still be nice.
We were supposed to have a rehearsal dinner at a restaurant, and my dad would have paid for it, as our family tradition goes —the groom’s family picks up the tab for the wedding; the bride’s pays for the rehearsal dinner —but the old man approached us a few months back, saying he’d likely shell out a couple hundred for the dinner, so could we use the cash instead and skip the dining out? Luis thought the money would be better. We could buy grass with it and earn us another two hundred back for our honeymoon dealing it. We took the money and bought the dope, but it turned out we ended up smoking so much that we didn’t make much on the investment, just enough to buy a couple tabs of acid for tripping during the celebration. Luis says we’ll have our honeymoon trip on our wedding day. And that’s cool.
After we finish doing all the useless junk Ceci is so desperate to accomplish and get through the wedding rehearsal, I finally head home to fix a meal for my family. Luis and his best man, Jorge, insist on coming over to eat with us. I prepare my specialty —liver and onions fried in bacon dripp
ings. With the extra two people, I have to chop the meat in smaller portions, but there’s enough. More than enough because people don’t go for liver like they should.
Cary, of course, scarfs it down, pausing only to say, “Can I have your radio when you move out?”
Dad eats without mumbling one word of thanks. Sophie will devour anything, but Rita and Loretta make big displays of pushing it around their plates without touching much. This, naturally, pisses me off, so I throw down my fork, spring from the table, and slam into the bathroom. My Last Supper —why couldn’t they at least try? Truth is, they’ll probably be relieved when I’m gone, less competition for the hot water and telephone. But you’d think someone —Sophie, Cary, or at least my dad —would be all broken up about me leaving. Loretta, alone, seems to think I’m making a mistake, but she’s not trying too hard to stop me.
Only my dad bothers to come after me. “H’ita, what’s wrong?” he says through the bathroom door. “Did you burn your tongue?”
“I should have stayed in college,” I say through the keyhole. “I was smart in school. I could have majored in psychology or something. You could have made me finish school instead of working at the bindery.”
“Pues, hija, if you want to go back to school, then go. You don’t want to get married, fine. That’s up to you.”
Then I hear Luis. “She don’t want to get married? Shoot, I won’t marry her. She’s the one that asked me.”
“Shut up! Shut up! Leave me alone. Everyone just leave me alone!”
And they do. I sit on the toilet lid, crying and honking my nose into tissue from the roll. Then I splash my face, all swollen and blotchy —perfect for wedding photos —and emerge to find my dad talking quietly with Luis in the kitchen.
“They get nervous, you know,” he’s saying.
I go for a glass of water, and Luis gives me a wary look. “Are you better or what?”
I nod. “I’m sorry, I just —”
“It’s okay, h’ita,” my father says. “Just take some Anacin and go lie down.”
So I do.
Though he’s at his folks’ house and I’m with my family, Luis and I agreed to swallow our hits at eight on the morning of our wedding. So here I am in the shower, gaping as the spray of water splinters into ice chips and then tiny diamonds webbed on glimmering strands, and I see how everything is attached to everything else, like the luminous beads on Fermina’s favorite rosary. This reminds me of her spirituality. When I’m straight, I don’t dwell on shit like this. But now, I sense how her spirit connected itself to people and to the world. This isn’t about God, and it’s sure as hell not about the church. It’s about being part of a chain or a web that keeps her whole and a part of me, the way my mother is after all these years. We are linked, and the links —if you could see them —are golden, not hard like metal, but more like light. Everything is connected, I realize as I towel myself off. But something’s missing, something I can’t name, though I know it’s about Fermina —something to do with who she was and how she lived.
In the bedroom, Loretta’s applying the only cosmetic she uses: ChapStick. Seated before the mirror, she looks like the Evil Queen in Snow White, her nose and jaw sharp as blades. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I say, and my words reverberate like I’m speaking into a well.
The Evil Queen glances at my reflection and caps the tube. “You’re stoned.”
I shake my head, and then I nod, laughing until I shudder and sob.
“Christ, Bette, do you want some coffee?”
“Wine, I need wine.”
Of course, we have to argue about that, but eventually she brings me a mug of cooking sherry, horribly sour shit, but I gulp it down, holding my nose. Then I rush to the toilet, throw up half my brains, and feel immensely better.
I finish dressing and slap on my makeup. I don’t do much with my hair, though. It’s pretty thick and curly, so it looks best when I leave it alone. As I finish applying mascara, I remember I have to wear burnt shoes, the pair I’d drunkenly tossed into the fireplace at a nightclub last week after Luis and I toasted our wedding and chinked in the champagne flutes. Sweet Luis singed the hair on his wrist pulling them out before they burned too badly. I examine them —blackened bottoms, char-marbled heels —and slip them on under my dress. The hem almost covers them pretty well, but Loretta takes one look and says, “How come your shoes are burned? They smell like smoking tires.”
“Never mind. No one can see them under there.”
“I can see them.”
“No one notices shoes.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“It’s too late, isn’t it?”
Loretta shrugs. “There’s always divorce.”
Though it’s my wedding day, there’s the usual bickering over the bathroom and the breakfast stuff. I can’t eat a thing. Instead, I watch the others scrapping like it’s just any old day —Cary jabbering while pulling a tortilla away from Sophie, who’s slapping at his hands, and my father hunting for his lighter. Suddenly their jaws elongate and their foreheads melt back. Their faces darken with fur and their teeth sharpen into fangs. They become wolves. Of course, it’s the acid, but tripping tends to reveal underlying stuff about people, their true natures. Rita pops on the scene and howls about some missing panty hose —a tall, girlish lycanthrope in a striped bathrobe.
Often my trips will take on a theme, and today’s is “People Who Turn into Animals.” I’d hoped for a fairy-tale theme after seeing Loretta become the Evil Queen. After all, it’s my wedding —what could be more appropriate? But animals, it turns out, rule the day, though Loretta remains the Evil Queen.
When we climb in the car, it fills with the rank stench of wolves, but I control my queasiness all the way to church.
Naturally, we’re ten minutes late, but when we arrive, there’s no sign of Luis. How fucked up is that? I head back for the car, parked across the street, ignoring all the gawkers milling about.
“Hey, where you going?” my dad calls.
“He’s not here. I’m going home.”
“Knock if off, mensa,” he says. “There he is driving up right now.”
My heart drops like an anvil chucked over a cliff.
The priest is frantic, probably has another wedding right after ours and doesn’t want to get backlogged, so we hustle into position. The organist starts up, and my dad, the weepy wolf, and I parade down the aisle. Most brides would be touched by seeing their fathers cry. But my dad bawls over anything. I never take it too seriously when my father turns on the waterworks.
The church floor is what gets to me. It’s this dark blue linoleum with white snaky swirls like ghostly serpents writhing in mire. Imagine picking your way to the altar, in charred shoes, over all these phantom snakes. Mighty distracting, take it from me. I make it to the altar, though, and the priest starts mumbo-jumbo-ing. We mumbo-jumbo back. More priest, more parishioners, more priest, and then I sense Loretta stiffening beside me, so I tune into the blabber.
The priest —though a thin guy —has these fat cheeks, puffed all the more by his high collar. Gray stripes streak back from his temples, through his closely cropped hair: he’s a friendly chipmunk chirruping in a dell: “. . . and as the church follows the leadership of Christ, our Lord, so must the wife follow her husband.”
My heart squeezes. I shoot a sideways glance at the Evil Queen. She trembles with wrath. Worried she’ll bolt or maybe even smack the priest, I concentrate on the chipmunk, willing him to stop. But he continues on, a cheery woodland creature, lacking the sense to wriggle his velvety nose for danger.
“In the way the church obeys the will of Christ, the wife must bend to the will of her husband in marriage.”
Loretta is about to blow, when Luis grabs my hand. “I, Luis Reynaldo Hernández, take thee, Bette Davis Gabaldón, to be my lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold . . .”
What’s a chipmunk to do, but twitch his whiskers and go on from there?
And so we are married.
At the reception, Nilda and Ceci get into it in front of the punch bowl and have to be separated by some ushers —not Cary, though. He spends most of the afternoon hiding out in the restroom from Sophie’s nutty friend Aracely, who’s got some crush on him. I score nearly six hundered bucks from the dollar dance, just enough for first and last on a rental in North Hollywood.
The house, our first home, used to be an office for this orange grove, so it’s smallish. And it’s filled with dark wood paneling —all horsy and masculine. The kitchen is like a closet, and the wood in there is painted navy blue for some reason, so it’s superdark. Actually, the whole place is short on lighting, but that’s okay. We’ll get lamps. In the meantime, I stick lots of fat, drippy candles around and string amber-colored beads in the kitchen doorway. Luis found this huge cable spool that we’re using as a table in the living room, since there’s no room in the kitchen for it.
I love this house and having people over, which is fine because Luis enjoys company, too. He works the early shift and almost always has guys over when I get home. They’ll be sitting around, listening to music or strumming their guitars, huffing on a bong, and drinking beer. I change into jeans real quick and mash some avocado and deep-fry some cut-up corn tortillas for chips. Then I join them with my glass of Chateau La Salle. And I am the woman of the house, a real person with bills and everything.
I couldn’t be happier, unless, of course, Ceci would leave us alone. She visits a wee bit too often, if you ask me. Just today she brought me yet another housewarming gift: a tall, spiky plant with sharp points at the tops of the leaves. “Sansevieria,” she says it’s called. “Mother-in-law’s tongue. When you have kids, you have to put it up because it’s poisonous at the root.”
“Gee, thanks,” I say, and get rid of her fast because I have an appointment.
Soon as she splits, I haul ass to Planned Parenthood for my pills, and I get the shock of my life when the doctor tells me I’m pregnant! Now, I know I’ve been not too regular about taking the pills, but I didn’t think that’d be a problem. I try to take two or three to catch up. I thought they had carryover strength. Turns out, they don’t.
The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters Page 12